H-1B Visa Usage Declines Sharply Due to Economy, Bureaucracy

News Analysis: The weak U.S. economy and more stringent scrutiny from an often hostile immigration bureaucracy has caused a sharp increase in the number of unused H-1B work visa slots.

The flagging U.S. economy is a major reason why nearly 40,000 H-1B visa application slots are currently unused, and an
additional 9,000 slots in the Masters Exemption program are still open.
This is a significant drop in applications from previous
years, according to immigration attorney Kellie Lego, managing attorney of the
MVP Law Group in Burtonsville, Md., near Washington, D.C. "It has to do a lot with
the economy and the issue of unemployment in the U.S.," Lego said. She said
that a few major corporations are continuing to bring employees into the United States
on H-1B visas, but that the overall numbers have shown a huge decrease.

Lego also said that she's seen indications that the
decrease in applications for H-1B visas, which allow experienced non-immigrants
to work for a time in the United States, go beyond just the economy. For example, she
said that would-be H-1B visa applicants have a much more stringent process for
proving they have a job in the United States than used to be the case, and that they
have to go through a series of interviews at a U.S. Consulate in their home
country. According to Lego, the ease with which a prospective visa applicant
gets through the process depends heavily on the evidence that the employer
provides in advance of these interviews.

"They're given so much scrutiny, it's hard," Lego said.
Lego noted, however, that with smaller companies, the economy is really the
significant factor - they can't hire people when there are no jobs to put them
into.
But a complex application process and a lack of jobs are
only part of the problem. There's also fear. Lego reported in her blog on
Feb. 11 that Customs
and Border Protection agents were denying entry into the United States of holders of
valid H-1B visas at Newark International Airport. Agents were
focusing on travelers from India, and turning back a large number of them, according
to reports cited in the blog.
Understandably, the chance that a bearer of a valid visa
for entry into the United States would be denied entry at the airport is enough to give
would-be workers pause. Why, after all, go to the trouble and expense of
entering the United States, only to be turned around regardless of having the proper
papers?

While the U.S. Department of State was unable to
speculate on the reasons for the drop in H-1B applications, a
spokesperson for
the department was able to confirm that applications have dropped
sharply over
the last two years. The State Department posts its visa statistics on
its Website each year, and the number for 2009 was approximately
110,000 applicants,
which is about a 30 percent drop from 2007.

Wayne Rash is a Senior Analyst for eWEEK Labs and runs the magazine's Washington Bureau. Prior to joining eWEEK as a Senior Writer on wireless technology, he was a Senior Contributing Editor and previously a Senior Analyst in the InfoWorld Test Center. He was also a reviewer for Federal Computer Week and Information Security Magazine. Previously, he ran the reviews and events departments at CMP's InternetWeek.

He is a retired naval officer, a former principal at American Management Systems and a long-time columnist for Byte Magazine. He is a regular contributor to Plane & Pilot Magazine and The Washington Post.